1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network establishing method and network terminals, and it particularly relates to a technology by which to support and assist the network connection utilizing the peer-to-peer communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, attention has been directed to the so-called peer-to-peer communication in which terminals connect directly with each other to form a network without the medium of servers and exchange data among themselves. The peer-to-peer communication also offers a wide range of applications, including chat communication, file sharing and game data exchange. This mode of communication does not require the intermediation of servers to exchange data and has thus gained its popularity by helping the users form their own communities at the grassroots level.
To establish a network connection with a certain peer terminal in a peer-to-peer communication, it is necessary for a user to acquire the IP address of the peer in advance. In the era of IPv6 to come, IP addresses would be assigned fixedly to all the terminals, but that is not the case at present. Under the existing circumstances, the IP address of each terminal is no more than an address assigned temporarily, and a different IP address is assigned by a provider each time an Internet connection is initiated. Hence, whenever a new IP address is assigned to a terminal, the terminal must pass on the new IP address to the other peer terminals to start a network connection in a peer-to-peer communication.
Furthermore, it is troublesome to find the IP address assigned to the user's own terminal with the help of a certain program and conveying the IP address to his/her peers by phone or other means each time he/she wants to have a peer-to-peer communication. It may be possible to install a dedicated server for exchanging IP addresses between peer terminals and to have each user access the server, but in such a case the installation and maintenance of the server may entail a huge expenditure. Besides, as the number of accesses increases, the need to build up the equipment capacity will require further investment.